The Dominion of Wolves
by Tavina
Summary: Because the world is dark and cold and gruesome. Because you can join us or be left behind. Half a year after Konoha's founding, Tobirama treats with a wolf queen.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl.**

* * *

"Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some."

— Margaret Atwood, _The Handmaid's Tale_

* * *

Their arrival at the base of the mountain is greeted by sentries, hidden in the forested underbrush, but still clearly denoted in his chakra sense.

Half a dozen of them, from here to halfway up Mount Hoyoken, strung out along the path upwards. There's likely more outside of his range, but as it is in this moment, there are half a dozen shinobi waiting on the four of them, himself, Anija, Toka, and Madara.

He'd protested Madara's inclusion on the trip, had feared there'd be some sort of incident between them bound to doom Anija's friendly gesture to naught but empty breath. However, while the Uchiha had glowered the entire way here, the trip has been silent so far. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. The tension on that front is enough to break kunai on, but as of yet, still confined beneath the surface.

The Inuzuka are a reclusive clan, largely keeping to their own territory and rarely leaving it for much of any reason, and only half a dozen guards to greet their arrival at the base of Mount Hoyoken is a rare show of trust.

That they'd been invited up to the Wolf's Lair to talk at all is interesting.

Anijia had taken it as a good sign, spoken happily of persuasion and peace and tactics and more people to join the village as though it were already a foregone conclusion. Persuade the Inuzuka, and the Hatake will follow. A sure course of action, Anija had said. But it is not. It is not and Tobirama knows it, feels it in the way the first sentry easily appears from the trees as though incorporeal, smoke-like in the evening light.

The man is tall, broad shouldered, neither smiling nor frowning, two red triangles gracing sharp, sharp cheekbones.

They are wary, not on edge, but not trusting either. Empathy has its problems, but it also its gifts. He knows very well that this will be no easy treaty to sign.

"You are here to talk?" The sentry asks, eyes as dark as pitch in the late light, an undercurrent of roughness to his voice, accent slightly different, almost archaic.

It lingers to Tobirama, unusual, as he cannot quite place it.

"Yes, we'd love the opportunity to!" Anija reaches forward, as if to offer a hand, but the sentry turns, one smooth motion that causes a lock in that wild mane of dark hair to swing free from the band that attempts to tame it and begins up the path without another word.

Anjia's face falls.

It is not quite the friendly welcome his brother had expected then.

Tobirama could've told him that long before they even left Konoha. But still, Anija had the strength to hope and Tobirama hadn't the strength to ruin it.

So thus it is now.

The four of them move forwards, up the path which winds up the mountain. He tenses when a chakra signature appears from behind, but a quick glance back reveals a large black wolf padding silently along the path a few feet behind them.

He had heard of the Inuzuka dogs before, but he hadn't been aware that they were...quite so large. The Inuzuka are reclusive, more so than the Hatake who often farmed outlying fields in western Fire Country and guarded merchant caravans that crossed the country. The Hatake dogs he'd met were perhaps, half the size of these.

The unblinking yellow eyes trained upon him unnerved him slightly. He's seen plenty of gruesome deeds, has done plenty himself, but there's something about being watched that never fails to unsettle him. Like a butterfly pinned to a sheet of paper in a nobleman's study, all eyes watching him has never made the tension settle.

The man leading them growls lightly in the back of his throat, tapping his thigh twice with a hand.

In a blur, the wolf surged to the forefront, following leisurely at the sentry's heels.

All around them, in the trees and in the brush, more chakra signatures began to close in and follow, still unseen and unheard.

Tobirama half suspects that the sentry knew just how unnerved he'd been and didn't bother to mention it. Why else would the man have called his dog?

The pricking on the back of his neck does not abate, however.

Yellow eyes are all around them, at the moment unseen, though not unfelt. He feels no ill will from the watchers though, more wary curiosity than anything else. For the moment, he lets it be.

* * *

It is not a terribly long path up the mountain, not by a long shot as the journey to get here had taken longer than the two hours it takes to scale the mountain, but the uphill climb is sharp and steep. While he was neither out of breath, nor did his calves burn from the exertion of walking up a path that seemed to have footholds only because of the passing of so many feet that it had worn smooth the stone, it didn't mean he _didn't _feel it.

Not one of their party really knows what to expect when they reach the top of the mountain. Neither the Senju nor the Uchiha have ever visited the Wolf's Lair.

He'd expected perhaps, houses, something like the outpost they'd all recently left behind, but that isn't a foregone conclusion either.

Toka draws closer to him, on their way up, leaving Anija and Madara to follow the sentry while they bring up the rear. "How many?" She asks, merely a whisper of a thought, two words quiet enough that they'd pass unheard unless—

"There are sixteen rangers out tonight, discounting me." The sentry responds from the front of the party some seven yards up ahead. Anija and Madara both startle slightly. They had only been not four yards up ahead and had heard nothing of Toka's question. "Eight of them are in the treeline."

Tobirama's blood runs a shade cooler than previously. That statement had been truthful. At this point in the journey, he would have said there were 8 chakra signatures in the treeline, not all so close, but within his range.

So there is to be no communication unheard then, no quiet discussion of plans after they retire for the night.

If one of them can hear a two word whisper from seven yards ahead, any conversation between the four of them will be overheard.

"Thank you." He speaks in a normal tone of voice, certain that the sentry has heard every word. "How much longer?"

The further they'd gone up into the mountain's depths, the thicker the underbrush. Here the thick canopy of leaves overhead is just enough to block out the weakening rays of sun, still lingering in the late evening.

Soon, everything will look the same shade of blackened tar if there were no stars or moon to guide them.

"Not long."

He still can't place that faint trace of archaic lilt, that something _familiar _but hazy can't be grasped nature of the accent.

Ah well, ignorance will have to do at this point. It isn't often that he thinks this — information is nothing if not valuable at all times — but for the moment, ignorance will have to do.

He wants the knowledge only for its own sake, but there is no reason to risk offending a potentially hostile entity in hostile territory.

There are more signatures on the edge of his awareness now, peaceable ones, moving in patterns that could only mean houses and streets. They are close to the Inuzuka Settlement, long christened the Wolf's Lair by the clans who lived below.

Here the air is sharp and crisp, cleaner than any town.

The sentry had been truthful, for they crest a rise, and suddenly the treeline ends and the path flattens and widens out into a clearing vast and wide.

The last shred of the day's sunlight hits the waving fields of golden wheat and glitters off the water in the rice paddies like burnished silver. Rice bent double, heavy under the weight of waves of grain, wheat tall and strong as far as clearing stretched.

Tobirama pauses to take in the sight, take in the woodsmoke curling from the edge of the wide, slope roofed houses, take in the sound of laughter and loud voices, take in the smell of roasted meat and freshly baked bread.

"Welcome to Okami's Villa." The sentry sighs long and soft, tension easing out of his shoulders though it shouldn't be so. It is only more dangerous the closer they get to the settlement not _less_, but the minds of other people have never been his strong point even if he is capable of knowing what they are feeling.

Tobirama notes the almost reverent way the other man lingers on the words however. _Welcome to Okami's Villa. _

His mind races through the possibilities in the space between moments. Okami, Land God, protector of the hunt.

A wolf god.

The Wolf's Lair.

Ah, so that was how the people down below named this place. The rumors might have a kernel of truth.

"My name is Kozashi."

Something about being down below had prevented the other man from giving a name.

The four of them almost speak over themselves to provide introductions, but eventually, they continue onwards, after Anija has chattered enough to fill a day's worth of conversation into no more than twenty minutes. He feels the signatures in the treeline break away, a group of teenagers racing each other through the rice fields, howling with laughter, pitch black mud flying with every step as children and dogs race each other back into the settlement.

Kozashi shakes his head, muttering something unintelligible under his breath.

In the dusky gloom, the lanterns casting warm light from each stooped doorway gleam like jewels. More often than not, there are dogs roaming the streets or sleeping on the side of the porch, puppies tussling in small enclosures in the yard, most larger than the flocks and children they are guarding.

The smell of food wafts through the paved streets. The bustling noise of conversation and a lively gathering in the central square washes over him. The chakra pulses here are bright and warm, enough of them together that it is almost uncomfortable to be around despite the clear signs of domesticity and no sign of an inhospitable welcome.

It's almost...too _much_ like being in the capital, but honestly so much worse all at once. There, the signatures flickered like summer fireflies out and about in rice paddies. Here, everyone burns like a small sized bonfire, all foreign and different and altogether too new to be of much help in identification.

The only signatures he knows beyond the party he came with are Kozashi and his wolf-dog companion.

Still, strangers must be uncommon here, for a small bubble of quiet curiosity envelopes every person they pass, and the conversations fall silent.

That is, they do until a small figure leaps out at them from a side street. "Chi—"

Kozashi reaches forward and sweeps the girl — she could be no more than four years old, all toddler limbs and wide brown eyes, a shock of silvery white hair cut short to about her ears — up into his arms. "That's not your chichi, Hokime."

The child's face falls. "Oh." She settles herself, face pressed against Kozashi's shoulder still staring at him with wide eyes as if tracing his every feature. "Oh," she says again, slightly less exuberant and more sad than not. "You're right, Koza-ji."

What—

It takes two seconds, two seconds too slow for Tobirama to make the connection.

She'd thought— He doesn't finish the thought, tosses it away like a broken kunai before it sinks deep enough to cut.

He can't help it really. It's a coping mechanism.

If he never makes the connection, surely it could never hurt anyone.

* * *

The child is handed off to someone, her mother perhaps, before they make their way into the main house, pressed almost into the cliffside of the mountain. There are several chakra signatures inside the house, one almost too bright to look upon, like a small sun in and of itself.

He rather hopes that they are going to visit someone else, but Kozashi pushes open the main door and makes his way down several unlit corridors as unerringly as someone who could see in the thick darkness ever closer to the one who burns like a forest fire.

Tobirama draws back his chakra sense, tightly and hopes for the best. He could always ask for the other to dampen their chakra, to reign it in, as Anija has always done for him, and Madara now does begrudgingly, but here in nominally friendly territory, he is at best, unwilling to give away the advantage.

Show no weakness and perhaps you might not be stabbed in the back when the hour grows late and the world goes dark.

Kozashi pushes the sliding door before them aside. "We're here, Komari-hime."

From beyond the flickering patch of light spilling from the doorway, he finally lays eyes on the one who had stung his chakra sense so.

Her back is turned, but the silhouette of a woman in a red yukata with black cranes embroidered across the bottom half sears itself deeply into his memory. Few have ever had the raw chakra to force him to pull his senses closer.

She sets the candle lighter down when she turns towards them, face half cast in shadow, a sharp crooked smile visible nonetheless in the light flickering wildly over walls of gleaming cherry wood. A collection of dark placards — memorial tablets — each with a candle before it line the alcove behind her. "Make yourselves at home."

"Yes!" Anija takes a tentative step forward and offers her a hand. "I believe one of your men collected a draft of the peace treaty we wanted to offer?" _Have you seen it? Do you have thoughts? Are you in agreement?_

At least, Anija is containing himself this time and won't talk her ears off spouting idea after idea about peace. Tobirama can see the excitement tightening his brother's shoulders.

"What can Konoha offer my people that Okami has not already offered?"

"Oh, well peace will—"

She almost laughs, lips turning downwards in an attempt to contain herself before she cuts Anija's speech short. "You speak of the benefits of peace," here her gaze slides past them to the doorway and the settlement beyond "but we have peace here already. Why should we move?"

"Because Konoha is larger." He has counted the chakra signatures here, at least, all that were within his range before he had to draw his sense back when confronted with the forest fire of Inuzuka Komari. "And there is strength in numbers."

She turns her attention to him, a spark of interest flaring across her face, as she traces his every feature. "Yes, I suppose." Her lips are such a bloody bloody red.

The firelight does nothing to help that.

There is an advantage here to press. "How many able bodied fighters can your clan afford to send to defend your fields?" There might be more people here than anyone had ever imagined, but so many of them had been young.

The sentries watching them from the trees had been teenagers, hardly aware of how easily Anija could turn the forest against them.

She tilts her head to one side, dark hair falling over one shoulder, loose and free and wild. "The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. Will your allies offer me and mine the same trust I'd offer a brother?"

"No, perhaps—"

Her almost whimsical smile flattens. "My people are poor this is true. We do not play the daimyo's games and we reap none of the rewards. We are hunters. We are herders. We are farmers. But we are pack, and we still have our pride. What can Konoha offer that Okami has not?"

No, this is not a clan easily won by promises of more food, better shelter, and protection from enemies.

Anija might not know how to respond, and has in fact fallen silent, but Tobirama has always known. It is only a matter of weighing the words, of choosing the right ones to tip the scales.

"Because the world is dark and cold and gruesome." And this is true. The peaceable settlement he'd seen outside these doors are a world away from the place he'd come from, but that does not mean they do not collide. "Because you can join us or be left behind."

And when that time comes, there will be nothing to shelter the children he'd seen wrestling outside from the horrors of war.

And for the first time, he sees her amusement bleed with something like respect.

* * *

"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."

— Gustav Mahler

* * *

**A.N. **So this grew out of a prompt fill from the Sanitize server, which, by the way you should check out if you haven't already, and has potential to be a longer work, but I figured this was a good point to stop.

~Tavina


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, Fishebake, and aflowerydeath.**

* * *

"The earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal"

— Camille Paglia

* * *

She hears from the first runner that Koza has met the visiting shinobi by the official path off of the mountain.

Jin and Keimaru are young still, having just hit their growth spurt, all long, gangly limbs and not enough understanding of their newfound reach, cheekbones just starting to cut through the puppy fat of childhood, prone to moving like whirlwinds and knocking over objects.

These visiting shinobi — she turns their names over in her mind: Senju Hashirama, Senju Tobirama, Senju Toka, and Uchiha Madara — are likely the first non-clan shinobi Jin and Keimaru have ever seen, if one discounts the Hatake.

"Do you think they are strong, Komari-hime?" Jin asks, bouncing from foot to foot with heady anticipation.

"They would not have come here if they were weak, Jin." She offers the boy — he is just a boy really — a fond smile. "Doesn't Haruko-baa want you home soon?"

It takes a moment before her words catch up with Jin, but when they do, he is off again, Keimaru dodging his heels. She watches him go, late afternoon turning single strands of his dark hair gold and wonders if the decision she's going to make is the right one.

He is not wary of outsiders, not really. He has never been down below the mountain.

The Children of the Pack might know that those who live below are unfriendly at best and enemies at worst, but that hardly means the thought is internalized. They know it, but they do not _believe _it. And that would cost them. That would cost them dear if it should come to war.

As she watches, Jin whoops and leaps into a puddle by the side of the street, watery black mud spraying up all about his feet. A boy really, he's just a boy still, this distant cousin of hers. Fourteen summers old this year with the promise of many more if she only makes the right choice.

Likely, he won't actually be in touching distance of the Senju, or the single Uchiha of the _peace _envoy ever again.

Not this visit anyway.

She has no doubt that if she refuses them this time, that they will return.

And when they do in that hypothetical future...when they do, it will be with fire and blood instead of open palms and courteous words.

The news from her brother-in-law, Kotaro, says that more clans than ever are joining the newly created Konoha.

It has only been half a year, but not only have the Uchiha and the Senju managed to not kill each other, the Hyuga, the Nara, the Yamanaka, and the Akimichi have already moved into the new "village."

She's no fool. The writing's on the wall.

The writing's on the wall and the tenuous peace here in Okami's Villa is about to come to an end at her hands. At her orders even, the age old traditions of her clan will warp and change, becoming unrecognizable. _Yasuka-sama, I am not sorry because I want to live. I am not sorry. _

The tenuous beat of her heart in her chest pounds a steady refrain. _I want to live. I want to live. I want to live. _

Before they had peace because those who lived down below were ready and eager to tear out each other's throats with no care for those who lived here up above. They profited on the pain and fear in some ways, took advantage of the war zone down below to build a land of peace.

There is no fault in what she is about to do, is there? _Centuries of history erased. _

But if she plays the game correctly, at least most everyone will live. If she plays the game.

Long, long ago, her mother had held her hands and told her — _One day when you are queen, you will have to make hard choices. Remember, Mari, an Inuzuka does not play games._

But that was in the world before, where the clans below were willing to kill each other over a mouthful of rice or the clink of two gold coins against each other.

The world has shifted and changed.

And to survive a changing world, you must shift and change with it.

She lights the candle before Kiyo's memorial tablet. _I pray for your guidance, my love. There are crueler storms to weather in the future. _

Her hands do not shake when she blows out the match and watches the smoke curl up from the burnt wood. It smells sugar sweet, maple burning to ash between her finger tips.

And a long long time she stands there, contemplating what she is about to break.

* * *

She hears the sound of feet approaching long before she even bothers to turn around — a party of five, four hesitant, one not. She smells them too — they carry with them the scent of smoke and ash, of blood and steel, of a ruined peace.

Maybe it's only her own suspicious nature speaking. Her own prejudices screaming at her to not listen to the ones who live below — _all who live below are deceitful by nature, Mari. _

She closes her eyes and breathes out, long and slow.

There's a game to play.

Koza's back.

They're here.

The door is soft against the dark cherry wood as it slides open, though she feels the vibrations down in her bones anyway. Soft or loud, she can't stop what she can hear. It's like an extension of her. A sense of scent, a sense of sound, a sense of touch.

Her dominion is the villa, a throbbing pulsing web where she knows every nook and cranny.

Soft or loud, the sounds carry all the same, all echoes and reverberations.

"We're here, Komari-hime." _Komari-hime. So formal you are in front of guests, my sweet cousin. _

Other than her brothers, she'd always been closest to Koza.

Long ago, Haha-ue took him in when he had nowhere else to go. He might as well be her only living brother. She has no living brothers.

This fractured family only has five living members now — Koza, Shumaru, Hokime, Takamaru and herself — where they once filled the whole house. Now these wooden walls and wooden floors rattle with a coffin silence filled with ghosts.

She turns towards the visitors, setting down what remains of the match as she does so. "Make yourselves at home."

The four of them, three men and a woman, one Uchiha and three Senju — a man with white hair...all her breath turns to ice.

_He had white hair. Eyes so red that he might've been a demon. _Kotaro told her this when he brought Kiyo back, broken and bloodied on that long road into the villa, summer sun so hot sweat slid down his face like tears.

The cruelest part of it all was that Kiyo had still been alive, bleeding out slowly beyond the help of medicine or mere mortal hands, a wound made to make him suffer.

They'd given him poppies to ease the pain of it. She'd held his hand as the sun set and his words slowly grew more garbled, disconnected like a pearl necklace suddenly snapped, beads flying in every direction. She does not remember much of that afternoon, that afternoon where she'd sent Koza and Hokime out to play by the river; she chooses not to remember much of it.

It is kinder to remember Kiyo as he'd been in life rather than as he lay dying, the last words on his lips her name.

_A Senju. _He'd said in his half delirious musings. _A demon too fast for words. _

And here before her is a white haired man with red eyes, his chakra tightly leashed down to its bare core, wearing the Senju crest upon his clothes.

She wonders what his name is.

Wonders if it is luck or fate or merely unfortunate circumstance that brought him here.

Wonders if Okami-jiisan had a hand in this.

"Yes!" The other Senju man steps forward, offers her a tentative hand. She smells the uncertainty on him, the barely concealed excitement and concern. He hopes for peace rather earnestly. "I believe one of your men collected a draft of the peace treaty we wanted to offer?"

She wonders if he knows what his… brother? It would have to be a brother, have to be either Senju Hashirama or Senju Tobirama who—

No, best think of this later.

First, she has to play the game.

"What can Konoha offer my people that Okami has not already offered?" Her own voice seems far away, colder than the north wind.

Normally she is kinder than this, mother to a daughter, mother of a clan, a woman of family...a heart made for love.

She is used to bloody hands, but she is not used to a heart carved by a butcher knife served on a platter like so much bloody meat.

"Oh, well peace will—"

She almost laughs, lips turning downwards in an attempt to contain herself before she cuts the Senju's speech short. "You speak of the benefits of peace," she looks outwards, picks up the sound of Hokime's scampering feet and Takamaru's softer tread following her about the house. Her daughter is well protected. She grew up with Takamaru, his own senses an extension of her own, the most loyal friend she's ever had. "but we have peace here already. Why should we move?"

"Because Konoha is larger." It's the white haired Senju, who cuts in. His voice is deep, a timbre not unfamiliar though his accent is strange. There's an odd sort of softness to his consonants, not nearly so hard as she is used to. There's a roughness to it, almost as if he is either on the cusp or just recovered from a sickness, the rasp of a cough lingering… "And there is strength in numbers."

She turns to look at him fully for the first time. "Yes, I suppose."

He is quoting their age old proverbs at her.

It would grate more, but she's tracing the lines and planes of his form instead, careful to remember every inch of him — blue armor, a white ruff of fur about his neck as though he were Okami-jiisan come to flesh, something of a hollow gauntness to his cheeks as though he has not eaten well in a long time.

The visitors all look like that though, not as though they'd starved, but more like meals had been in short supply of late, lean with hollow cheeks.

It does not bode well, does not bode well for her pack, despite their lack of wealth, no child or elder much less able-bodied pack member goes hungry.

The firelight does nothing to help that. It throws shadows in the gaunt dips of his cheeks and brow, makes him look more human than demonic. Just a hungry young man, like the stray children that Haruko-baasan fed in open secret.

The children down below starved in the streets with no one to take them in, power, wealth, and food gathered into a few tight fisted hands. She'd always known this, has heard the stories, has seen the sights.

She does not want to know that Kiyo's murderer is no more than a man. A young man, younger than her expectations, younger than Kiyo had been when he died, younger than _her. _

He is so young for her to blame. Just a man.

He has taken her silence as hesitance then, pressing forward with more words. "How many able bodied fighters can your clan afford to send to defend your fields?"

He _knows_. She realizes this, between one breath and the next. _A sensor. _

She tilts her head to one side, hair sliding over her shoulder, breathing calm. So he knows. What of it? Her questions are still the same. If they do not concede her pack's autonomy, death would be a kinder fate. "The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. Will your allies offer me and mine the same trust I'd offer a brother?"

They would not. She knows they would not, knows it sure as she knows Kiyo's face, sure as she remembers her otouto's dimpled smile, sure as she feels the warmth of the lit candles behind her.

"No, perhaps—"

"My people are poor, this is true. We do not play the daimyo's games and we reap none of the rewards. We are hunters. We are herders. We are farmers. But we are pack, and we still have our pride. What can Konoha offer that Okami has not?" Whatever words they choose to woo her, her questions are the same.

They do not know that she intends to accept. She intends to accept, but she does not intend to accept an uneven bargain.

No, Haha-ue had told her not to play the game, but she is Inuzuka Komari, mother of a clan, and if she is to play the game despite the warning, she can only do as she has always done with everything else her life.

If she must play the game, she will play it well.

"Because the world is dark and cold and gruesome." What a truth he speaks. It is likely the only truth he has ever known. The world below is indeed, dark and cold and gruesome. "Because you can join us or be left behind."

She would respect him; she really would.

She would, except for the blood between them.

He looks like a man, reminds her of the stray children Haruko-baasan feeds with their extra rice, but she has no sympathy for him in this chilly heart of hers.

And she never will.

* * *

Takamaru tells her that the visitors are well situated in their rooms, comfortable enough despite being among people they clearly do not trust.

That is, all but one.

She finds Senju Tobirama — she knows his name now; he'd introduced himself with an extended hand that she did not deign to take — sitting on the stooped porch looking out at darkening gloom.

He has his chin propped up one one hand.

This close she can hear his every breath, the steady beat of his heart in his chest, the slight hitch in his throat when he noticed her arrival. Her chakra is pulled tight about her, close enough and her footsteps soft enough that he did not notice her approach until she was quite close.

This close, she could tear out his throat with her teeth if she so chose, wager her life and the lives of all she holds dear for the poisoned sweetness of vengeance.

Her blood may boil, but she is smarter than that.

No, it might be simple to kill him now, but it is also costly.

Good things come to those who wait.

He is only a man.

Men can die a hundred thousand different ways, a hundred thousand innocuous ways.

She sits down beside him on the edge of the steps.

She used to sit here with Kiyo, her head against his shoulder, his arm around her waist at this same time of day.

"Do you find my hospitality poor?" she asks him, for really, she is rather curious. He _is _the only one who has not decided to stay in his room.

"No," he says, but does not elaborate further.

She can smell no lie on him though. This close he smells of earth and steel, sweat, though not unbearably so. The further you elaborate, the more likely you are to slide into untruths.

They continue to sit in silence for a long moment, dusk falling ashen all about them like the remnants of buried dreams.

"Is there a reason you've pulled your chakra tighter?" He stares straight ahead red red eyes fixed on something she cannot understand in the distance.

"I am told I am painful for sensors to consort with if I do not."

This is only the truth. Ever since she picked Okami's Sword up from the rack where it hung in the shrine, she has been difficult for sensors to live with.

"How did you know that?" He asks her, words suddenly sharp. Ah, she has spooked him, an acrid undercurrent of fear radiates from him now.

Faint perhaps, because he holds himself relaxed still, the picture of idle curiosity, but it is harder to hide from the other senses.

Sight is cheap and easily deceived after all.

"Would you know how many people live here if you do not?" She twirls a strand of golden wheat about her fingertips — Kiyo had always told her she had a killer's hands, nails that so easily became claws in defense of others. "I am not a fool, Senju Tobirama." She smiles, rolls his name through her mouth, tastes the difference of it on her tongue. "Though I suppose it would be easy to mistake me for one."

He will be a dead man soon enough, even if she will never taste his blood on her tongue.

He will be a dead man soon enough.

* * *

"We have built cathedrals

Out of spite and splintered bone,

Of course they aren't pretty,

Nothing holy ever is—"

— Brenna Twohy

* * *

**A.N. **So! A continuation! Bits and pieces hinted at in chapter one are becoming clearer in chapter 2!

Thank my lovely betas for reading and rereading this chapter. Their enthusiasm for this fic and continuing it has been a constant source of inspiration for me.

And thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited and followed.

~Tavina


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, drowsyivy, Fishebake, and aflowerydeath.**

* * *

"How do we forgive ourselves for all of the things we did not become?"

— Doc Luben, _14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes_

* * *

_She is a strange woman,_ he thinks as he watches her rise to go, wooden porch stoop creaking as she passes over the graying boards to return to the house. Someone who notices the details is rare, and yet though he had felt no special regard from her beyond her vague interest during their conversation, she'd seemingly seen so much more of him than he had of her. She is strange enough for that.

As she'd just told him, no fool.

He is not used to being the less perceptive one. He is not used to being the observed instead of the observer.

There is no danger here that he is aware of. All about, in the houses built into the mountain, the clan is, for the most part, falling asleep, chakra signatures softer than they are when people are awake. But still he is wary.

That is only his nature.

He is wary, that is all.

It is beautiful here. The river water is so very clear this far upstream, and there is a simple rustic beauty to the wooden houses with their gray slate roofs, the streets dusty with black earth, the pastures, the cattle, the sheep, the paddies and the grain fields, the trailing wisteria and vineyard grapes. He'd only seen wisteria blooming in noblemen's gardens before. It takes too long to flower for planting it to be practical when the camp moved every few years, and the countryside burned often enough to strip the flowers from the landscape.

It looks almost like something out of a nobleman's hanging scrolls, a painting of country life — simple, idyllic, idealized.

But here, here it looks as though it has always been this way, always been peaceful, if imperfectly so.

She'd been right to say that they are not wealthy, for though the wood is fine, the houses here show signs of age, of patched places where the roof tiles have worn thin, of clothing more often spun of rough wool and furs than cotton or silk. Her own hair had been left loose and free without ornamentation and there'd been wooden geta on her feet.

The few hair ornaments he'd seen were made of either bamboo or wood, but for the most part, though the living spaces are by no means crude, there's a lack of anything extra.

No ornamentation, no fine spices, no gaudy shows of wealth and prominence.

Her hand dipped candles had been made of lard, instead of wax.

She'd not seemed like a liar, but he knows well the ability to mislead without being untruthful. Omission is as much a falsehood shinobi employ as anything else. Perhaps she is inclined to agree. Perhaps her clan comes in peace.

It doesn't make staying here without danger.

Still, the hour is late and he rises to head in to his guest room. It...feels like he is intruding upon something in that room.

It looks lived in, settled, personalized, like the owner had just stepped out for a moment.

He hears the pattering of small feet and the uneven gait of — ah, a wolf dog following a child — feels the bright flame of one signature and the languid ease of the other before turning a corner and nearly bumping into the child.

He catches her by the shoulder before he notices the cropped mane of silvery gray hair.

The large gray dog behind her growls. She growls right back.

Honey brown eyes blink up at him with rapidly growing confusion. "Who're you?"

The child who'd mistaken him — _her name is Hokime —_ he drags it up from the depths of his memory.

"A visitor," he says. "Who are you?"

He'd thought her one of many children, but then a normal clan child doesn't often have leave to wander about a clan head's house after dark. Who is she really?

She frowns up at him, a child's pout on a child's face. He's not...entirely used to this, but it's not terrible. "Live here," is all she says. "You didn't answer the question."

"Senju Tobirama." He considers her for a moment, considers the two red tattoos on her face. "And you are Inuzuka Hokime?"

She does not deign to give this not-question a response. Clearly no one has asked her this before. Instead she follows him down the hallway until they get to the door. "You're staying in Uncle Kyoryu's room."

_Uncle Kyoryu. _

"Is he… out?" He half fears the answer.

Hokime takes him by the hand. "He wouldn't mind. Haha-ue says that he liked to share."

A chill passes through him. Of course, this is a family house. This is a clan who does not often see guests. Why else would there be four rooms to spare?

"And whose room is that?" He asks of the one across the hall. Anija was staying there.

"Uncle Shinta's!"

"And that one?" The one next to Anija's. Currently housing the Uchiha. Well, no, actually the Uchiha is currently in Anija's room. Tobirama ignores any and all ideas of what the Uchiha may or may not be doing in Anija's room.

"Jiichan and Baachan!"

"And that one?" Toka is staying in that one.

"For visitors."

He looks around this house, at the rooms that used to belong to other people, and breathes out. "I see." He sounds faint, even to himself.

"Are you okay, Tobira-san?"

He'll be sleeping in a dead man's bed.

"Yes, thank you."

He steps into the room in a haze. The candles cast a heavy shadow over all the corners of the room. There's a bookshelf under the window, several scrolls left there haphazardly, plate armor hung on the rack in the corner, a chest of drawers he is sure is filled with personal items, a katana slung across two hooks, a wakizashi beneath it.

It looks like Inuzuka Kyoryu just stepped out for a moment, for a mission or perhaps to work the fields. Tobirama half expects someone to step through the door any moment now, chakra bright like wildfire, a crooked half smile tugging at full lips and laughing pitch dark eyes.

It's like he's breathing ghosts.

_What right do you have to stay here? _the whetstone leaning against a wall asks him. _What right did you have to threaten my sister with war if she would not bend? _

_What right? What right?_

_What right?_

"Tobira-san, you don't seem very okay." Hokime-chan has followed him into the room, her eyes still following his every move.

He...hasn't much of an idea what to say. Rarely is he asked to deal with children, and certainly not children as young as age five.

He doesn't remember...do five year olds...what do children talk about?

"I'm quite alright, thank you."

She sits on the floor by his side, clearly not bothered by his armor, or his chakra, or the kunai pouch still clipped to his thigh. "You're very unhappy." She seemingly ignores his attempts to convince her that he is fact, _fine, _not in need of any extra attention at all.

She pats his knee with a small hand as if that makes it all better. "Don't worry, Tobira-san. It's very safe here."

"Safe?"

She looks at him as though he must be rather slow on the uptake. "Of course. We aren't like people who live below, you know."

People...who live below. She must mean... "Hokime-chan, _I _live below."

She pouts at this. "Well, you're clearly different." As though he's exempt from whatever madness it is that plagues the clans who do not...live on Mount Hoyoken. How odd.

He hasn't much idea how to respond to this, so he does not.

Still, she does not go away. "Are you a Hatake, Tobira-san?"

Hatake. "Is your father a Hatake?"

"Uh, huh," she nods, slightly absently, a little bit sad. "But he hasn't come home for a long time now."

He feels...a mild twinge of irritation at this. What sort of irresponsible man had a child, out of clan, and then does not bother returning home to visit?

The child clearly knows and misses him.

"No, I am not a Hatake," he sighs. "I am a Senju."

"Does that mean _your _chichi was a Hatake?" She stares at him, a smile on her lips, stars in her eyes. "Then we'd be the same!"

What the— he'd just said—

_The Inuzuka is a clan where women rule. _

He...perhaps...hadn't quite understood what that meant.

Yes, Inuzuka Komari is a clan head.

Yes, in most clans, leadership would always fall to a man, but he'd thought…

It was just a singular woman who ruled the clan, not that the natural inheritance of things had been flipped on its head.

"No, my father was a Senju."

Her face falls comically at this. "Why are there so many Senju?" she mutters from one corner of her mouth. "Why not Hatake? He's got white hair too."

He looks at the sulking little girl on the throw rug before him and wonders… "Do all people with white hair have to be Hatake?"

She casts him a glance as though he really might be slow in the head. "Of course! Or they've got Hatake chichi!"

"I...see."

The laws of inheritance must work in strange and wondrous ways in the Inuzuka Clan then. She does not seem particularly bothered by his lackadaisical commitments to this conversation.

Then, she doesn't seem particularly bothered by much of anything at all.

"So what do you do, Tobira-san?" She scoots closer, leans against his leg, her head on his knee, playing with a bit of string between her hands.

"What do I...do?"

Somehow he doesn't think "I kill people for a living" would go over particularly well with this child of peacetime rice fields and a porch filled with wisteria.

"Uh-huh!" She continues in her rambling. "Like how Koza-ji is the Speaker and Kota-ji's a merchant's guard!"

Rarely has he been tongue-tied, more often than not, his enemies accuse him a quick and cutting wit, but confronted by this small child's conversation he is nothing less than tongue-tied.

"I like to write seals, in my spare time." If he didn't live a life of blood, where would his road have taken him?

He doesn't know.

"Seals?" The string in her hands morphs into a different shape. "What are those?"

Ah. Something he can actually talk about.

As it is, apparently children do not care about the technical nature of sealing, for Inuzuka Hokime skips out of the conversation soon after.

But she leaves him wondering.

What would he have done with his life if he hadn't been a shinobi? Does he even know?

What does it mean that his life is so intrinsically tied to blood and killing? Does he know how to be anything else?

And all around, the dead man looms.

He does not sleep that night.

* * *

The morning comes, sunlight gold dancing on dust motes. He blinks the fatigue from his eyes, his hands clasped loosely on the table before him.

He is eager to be gone.

The dead man who this room belongs to had haunted him all night. He's not normally so prone to emotional wastage or imagination over the fate of the dead, but this house seems quite literally empty of people who ought to be here.

There are only three human chakra signatures in the entire house:

Inuzuka Komari-san, Kozashi, and Hokime-chan.

Death lingers in his breath, and even if he's no stranger, it doesn't mean it doesn't turn his stomach.

There's a certain lack of humanity in someone whom death does not bother.

He knows the whispers, has heard them when people thought he was too injured, or too busy to pay them mind.

And that is only because his face is colder than the rest.

Ah, but—

But beside Anija, all men look cold.

And he is not a particularly warm hearted man.

"Tobira!" Anija's pounding on the door. "Are you awake?"

He rises, legs gone numb and therefore stiff, to open the door. "I would be now, even if you didn't—" His gaze falls to the lightening bruise on his brother's collarbone before he jerks his thoughts away.

Nothing happened. Clearly.

"Tobira, you look terrible." Anija leans in closer, questions all alit in the fierce maelstrom of his chakra. "Did something happen during the night?"

Well he could hardly say _I was overcome by the dead man haunting this room where every breath felt like breathing in particles of someone else._ Anija wouldn't understand it, likely hadn't even felt it or thought about the bed in which he'd spent the night. Anija never does.

That's no fault of Anija's really. It's a kinder life _not _to know.

All he says is, "It was a bad night. We ought to finish what we came here for."

Inuzuka Komari is likely ready to sign a treaty.

Best be ready to read the fine print of what she has to offer.

* * *

He does not see Inuzuka Komari or her silver-haired child for some months after leaving the mountain.

Instead, his days are taken up by building up the backbone of Konoha. Where to place a newly joining clan so that they are not directly next to their most hated neighbors, where to put down new paved roads, where to leave the paths as just beaten down dirt, how to make sure that each house is connected to the central water system, all the little city planning details that Anija let fall by the wayside.

He wants there to be some sort of standardized learning for the children, beyond whatever parents and elders and siblings might be teaching them.

He wants some form of standard hierarchy for the able bodied shinobi, wants to _build _so much.

What can he do to centralize administration? What can he do to improve the lives of people who _do _join Konoha?

And if what pushes him harder than he was pushing himself before is a voice in the back of his head that sounds remarkably like — _What can Konoha offer my people that Okami has not already offered? — _that would be his own personal affair.

If meeting Inuzuka Komari has unduly affected him, beyond anyone else he has ever met before, that is his own affair.

Her words have reached under his skin and prodded at the most sensitive parts of him.

That _challenge_, it burns him.

The mere implication that he has not done enough, that he had to resort to threats of force to make a clan bend to Anija's wishes? It is not to be borne.

It is as though she'd looked right through him and pushed a grain of sand into the part of his soul that would irritate the most, and now it smarts and stings.

So he spends the winter building, building, _building. _

He pushes himself further, and further and yet still further because she'd seen his complacency, forced him to threaten instead of cajole and he could hardly bear that light mockery she'd made of the city his brother had been willing to kill himself to realize.

It is not to be borne.

So when the Inuzuka arrive in the spring, it is to a changed city, to paved streets, orderly markets, to neighbors putting up new buildings faster than people could move in, to ground pipes being laid for the city sewage system just as fast as the earth could thaw.

It is a crowd, muddy from the long road, that treks its way through the gates. And if he searches a little bit harder for the feel of Komari's chakra...if he is ill prepared for Kozashi to be leading the party…

"Tobira-san!" The squelch squelch squelch of small feet bouncing their way towards him at breakneck speeds do barely anything to prepare him for the small blur that nearly _flies _into his middle. "Tobira-san, I missed you!"

Blows have a hard time budging him, but the absolute force of nature that is this small child nearly knocks him back to sit in the dirt.

Anija is muffling a laugh, but he's more concerned with the squelching noises Hokime-chan had been making. "You missed me?" He holds her up so he can examine her more closely.

She hangs there in the air with his hands holding her under her arms, legs swinging briskly back and forth...incidentally kicking mud onto the front of his shirt.

"Uh-huh." She seems not at all bothered by his routine examination of her, as though attempting to locate somewhere where she _might _be injured beyond giving it up as a bad job. _A brain injury, _he thinks, half hysterically. _It must be that. _"Who else would talk to me about this squiggle joining to the other squiggle to make a big even longer squiggle?"

Behind him, Anija doubles over with laughter.

Somehow he suspects this will be a common occurence from now on.

* * *

"I'm not too gone to be healed, am I? I'm not too gone am I?"

— Alice Notley, _In the Pines: Poems_

* * *

**A.N. **In which Tobirama is overdramatic, Hashirama is oblivious, and Hokime finds a very very _sad _man who needs some cheering up.

At this point, the regularly scheduled fanfiction has fallen behind in order for me to support my indulgences. As it is, need I say more about the state of my life? All I can say is that Senju Tobirama is still banging pots and pans together in my head demanding to be heard and written, so we continue this.

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed. You all make this journey so much fun.

~Tavina


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, drowsyivy, and animemoms.**

I normally don't do ANs at the beginning of chapters, but this is something really important: Huge shout out to Sublimey for the new cover art of this fic, please shower her in love and compliments!

* * *

"I will bleed for better reasons this year."

— Unknown

* * *

"He's a Hatake, but he doesn't know it," Kime sighs when Mari comes to tuck her into bed. "And he's very sad. Haha, are all the people who live below so sad? And he didn't bring his partner with him. Why didn't any of them do that?"

Ah yes, her child of a thousand questions. In days before it had been "Haha, do birds fly because they eat bugs, and do we not fly because we eat bread, and do wolves come in packs because we love each other lots, and if so why don't birds come in packs?"

And for a long while it has been "Haha, will Chichi come back soon?"

Those had been the hardest days.

For the both of them.

The hardest for everyone involved.

She will never shatter so again, having once broken upon those fault lines.

"I have not found everyone who lives below quite as sad as Senju Tobirama, no." She brushes Kime's hair away just enough to press a kiss to her daughter's forehead. "And I am hardly sure he _has_ a partner." In fact, she is almost certain he doesn't.

This makes Hokime sit up and make for the door before she catches her wayward daughter. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Hafta hug." Ah yes, there's that same mulish scowl that would grace Kiyo's face in his rare moments of unhappy irritation. Unfortunately perhaps for her, Kime had inherited _her_ propensity towards irritation over small things and petty inconveniences. Her Kime is a stormy one, so attached to justice and truth and bright shining things.

Her mother would tell her that this is just the logical way of things. In a way, this is her karma, her balance to bear, even if she does not think of her child as a burden.

"How he going to be happy if he doesn't get hugs." Kime pauses and thinks over this, and as if coming to some terribly grand conclusion, settles on, "That must be it." She nods to herself quite assuredly. "He's super sad because he doesn't get hugs."

Mari, very privately, doubts that Senju Tobirama's problem is a lack of hugs. He is a man of blood. Men of blood with heavy hearts and unclean hands can not be settled for with _hugs. _

"It is late," is what she settles on. "Surely hugs for Senju Tobirama can wait til the morning."

"But he's not asleep yet." Kime tugs at her sleeve. "Haha, you know he's not asleep yet."

And indeed, despite the late hour, Senju Tobirama seems to still be quite awake. He smells of sweat and regret and something like guilt, though guilty for what, she can't imagine. He is quite awake, worrying by the sound of his pacing along the floor.

What an interesting combination.

Was the man always such a worrier?

"He is trying to fall asleep, Kime-chan." _Do you understand that he may not love you like so many other people in your life love you? _"And even if he isn't _you _are." She tucks Kime in firmly to forestall any arguments. "I will know if you get out of bed."

"But Ha_ha_."

"I will make Takamaru sit on you." Across the room, Takamaru's ear flicks with agreement and pleased interest.

He is always enthused for sitting, expecially because Kime has such interesting reactions to getting sat on.

"That's unfair!" Kime huffs and crosses her arms. "Haha, you can't make Takamaru sit on me."

She masks a smile with the downward tilt of her lips. "And why not? Is Takamaru not _my_ partner?"

"It just isn't fair." Kime turns crossly to face the wall, though her pout is visible in the straightness of her spine. "When I get a partner I will make them sit on you, Haha. I will grow so big that you will have to listen to _me _instead."

She can barely contain her laughter at this, but somehow she manages it. "I'm sure you will, my little terror."

Thank Okami for her small indulgences.

Thank Okami for her daughter.

When she slides the door closed behind her, all laughter leaves her.

On the morrow she will sign a treaty.

Soon, this house of ghosts will be exchanged for another.

Soon, the land of her clan will return to wilderness as Okami's Villa is abandoned.

Soon, and it is to be at her decree.

"Mari?" It is Koza, leaning against the opposite wall.

In the darkness, his face is cast in shadow, but they do not need eyes for understanding to pass between them.

After all, sight is but lesser to the other more telling senses.

* * *

"You mean we are to move?" It's Haruko-baa's quavery voice that rises above the murmur of the congregation after she has signed the treaty. "We are to move below?"

And as soon as she says this, all words from the pack cease. It had been a tumultuous gathering before, all gatherings really are. But when faced with the sudden and terrifying reality of what the arrival of the outsiders had meant?

There is silence, like a candle gutted by the wind.

The lack, it howls.

And she can offer them nothing more in this silence than "yes."

And as soon as she says so, the square roars back to life.

"But we are so close to harvest time."

"But we are comfortable here."

"It is one thing to have pity—"

"It is another to _live _with—"

She waits out the noise, waits out the chill, waits until they have voiced all the concerns they have.

It is the way of the pack.

The strength of the pack is the wolf.

The strength of the wolf is the pack.

This is the law of the forest, old and as true as the sky.

_The wolf that keeps it shall prosper. The wolf that breaks it must die. _Her mind finishes the rhyme for her.

Daughter. Sister. Mother. Queen.

She is well loved, and here in this villa, she has power, but she wagers it now — power and love.

"I ask this of you not because I have much love for them." No, she has no love for them at all. The shinobi who live below are not her people.

They do not share the same customs.

She loves them not at all.

"But because the world is changing." The world is changing. "I am sure you have heard of Konoha." She takes a breath. "The Uchiha and the Senju have stopped fighting. Other clans — the Akimichi, the Yamanaka, the Nara, and the Hyuga have joined them."

She does not often deal in fear.

She does not prefer to frighten when she could explain instead.

But she is frightened.

She is frightened of what will happen if they do not move, and she is frightened of what will happen if they do move.

The future sways like a heat wave. It is up to her to grasp it.

"And now, they have turned their attention to us."

_They came with words of peace this time. _

_But how long before talk of peace turns to the flames of war?_

_How long can we tarry, holding to what can never be again?_

_This world has changed. We must change with it to survive. _

And that is the crux of the matter is it not? They all must make sacrifices to survive. Okami-sama will understand. Even he had made sacrifices to survive.

Even a god would understand.

"But surely, that need not involve us?" Taiki's voice rises above the rest. "It has always worked before." The pack watches her. Koza watches her.

Haruko-baa watches her.

Taiki watches her, his hands on his daughter's shoulders, his eldest girl, a child of eleven.

It had. It had always worked before.

"They have never stood united before." Their peace was a thing unnoticed by the larger world until now. But now that they have come here, they will not turn away. Now that they have seen, they will not forget. She'd seen how Senju Tobirama's red eyes had watched them in their daily lives, the rawness, the _envy _that bled from him like a skewered pig. "You know how busy they'd been, enough that they would not notice us."

"Okami-sama will not abandon us." Asari throws her shoulders back. "He will defend this villa to the end. We should not abandon him."

"This is where Yasuka-sama built the den for the pack." It is Haruko-baa who speaks now, a frown tugging at her quivering lips. "Surely it is all we need?" She is not...unacquainted with their history, not unaware of Yasuka, of the wolf queen who had built it all.

She is not unaware of the destruction she takes into her own hands.

These are her thoughts, given voices, given form and names. These are her words, spoken by others, out into the world now like she'd feared whilst lighting candles.

They'd been hers, but now that they come from other people's hearts, she can hardly bear to hear them.

_Kiyo, this will be a hard road to walk indeed. _

"He will not abandon us should we choose to walk this path." It's Koza who steps forward. "Sister, he will not leave us simply because we choose to change."

"But how do you know?"

Mari sees the fear, sees the pain and confusion reflected in Asari's eyes.

"Speaker, how do you know? Okami-sama has not spoken in an age."

The last time their god had spoken to a Speaker had been during her grandmother's reign.

An age. An age and still the long years pass.

Okami-sama had been silent for a long time.

"Because I know his values." Koza steps down to take Asari's hands. "I am confident of his love." _Come walk with me, Sister. _"Okami-sama and Yasuka will not abandon us, no matter how far we go."

_If you do not have the faith, keep faith with me. _

"We will go after the harvest." This, in its own way, steadies some of the concern.

There are still some months until the harvest is finished.

There are still some months of time before they must all contemplate change again.

* * *

Those months pass all too soon.

All too quickly, she is sitting once more at the kitchen table with Koza on one side and Haruko-baa across from them.

"Is it safe to go?" The older woman asks her. "Is it safe to leave here?"

"Is it safe to stay?" Mari turns the question around, holding their fears up to the light. "We've grown content here, but the fire mountain is never _safe._" And indeed it isn't.

The land here is fertile, the den is well dug and well lived in, and here they have everything, but that same rich earth bears the ashes of a thousand trees, bears the grief and guilt of a god, bears the death of a mortal woman so beloved that the mountain itself wept red tears.

No, life on the fire mountain has never been _safe. _

She fears that her people had grown complacent with the years of peace, with the years of rich harvests and quiet days, when the mountain sleeps and the river flows downwards. She fears they no longer wish to face the storm, with how long they have lived in the eye.

Haruko-baa regards her for a long time with pitch black eyes, wrinkles deepening around her lips and chin. "When you were born, the Speaker foretold that you would be a great queen."

_The greatest queen we have seen since Yasuka, forged from ash and fire. _

"And when you picked up Okami's sword from the shrine, I thought that that proved it, that you would be the great queen that the speaker had foretold." It is not a smile exactly, that graces Haruko-baa's face. "But I see that your greatest journey is now. Once more we will build." A papery hand squeezes hers once. "Once more we will build."

_You will be a great queen one day, Mari. _

But has she not already been a queen? She is still a young woman, even though she rarely feels so. Centuries could not weigh heavier than the fatigue on her shoulders, but she has long been queen.

"You are _already _a great queen." Koza remarks when Haruko-baa is further down the path. "You are my sister, and you are my queen."

She laughs at this, spirit suddenly lighter. "I shall fear the day you criticize me, Koza." She pats the curve of his jaw, kisses his cheek, as familial affection suggests fondly that she do. "You have always had a golden tongue."

"Bah," he makes a face at this. "The only things golden in this villa are the wheat and the sunlight."

"And your tongue." But she sees that further teasing will only disgruntle him further, so she changes tact. "But enough of these heavy discussions for the morning, how goes your courtship of Kiji?"

"I am _not._" Koza bristles as though suddenly struck with desire to become a hedgehog. "_I _am not in any manner courting Kiji."

"You visit so often, I half wonder when we can expect him to come to dinner."

Koza might deny it all he likes, but she has seen how her brother lingers near the potter's workshop, even on the days where he had nothing to pick up there, has seen his steps lighten and his whistling brighten, especially in this recent year when there had been few moments of brightness to be had between the five of them in this rattling, empty house.

She expects the love her brother has for Kiji the potter.

"And how do you know it is not my interest in Yuzuko that makes me visit there?"

"Yuzu?" She almost has to laugh at this again. "Have you spoken two words to Yuzu all these months that you've thrown clay with Kiji?"

"Well, maybe I have."

"Don't tell me that your sudden interest in artistry is because of an infatuation with the potter's sister and not the man himself, Koza."

"Well, maybe it is."

"You call her Yuzuko, brother mine," she pauses to let the words settle a bit further. "But you call Kijihara merely Kiji." And beyond anything else, that is how she knows. "My heart is not so frail as all that these days, Koza. You may tell me of your delight as well, you know."

"This year has been hard." Koza clasps his hands together tightly. "I thought perhaps it was—"

"Too soon?" She barks a laugh at this. "It will not drive me to tears because one of us is _happy_." She leans up a little bit, standing on the tips of her toes, to squeeze his cheeks together. "Bring Kiji to dinner. And if you truly do speak to her, ask Yuzu to come too. This house has been missing its cheer long enough."

She misses the hand that would hold hers, misses his smiles, and quieter words, even misses his stony affronted silences that she'd never thought she'd miss every time they'd fought, which was often.

But she does not begrudge Koza of his happiness.

* * *

Kozashi is the one who leads everyone out of the villa carrying what they could — seeds, cuttings from their trees and vineyards, furniture, family heirlooms.

She stays behind. One final choice awaits her.

When her clan leaves here, no one will ever be able to move into their sacred grounds again. In so many ways, this villa will always belong to them.

"Haha, I will miss you." Hokime clings to her leg. "I will miss you forever and ever and ever."

Mari leans down to ruffle her hair. "I will be along in a moment. So you will not have to miss me forever and ever and ever."

Kime frowns stubbornly. "Then I will miss you for as long as you are gone."

"I will make this as quick as I can." She crouches down so they are eye to eye. "Stay close to Koza-ji, alright?" _Stay safe. Stay safe my little wolf. _

She trusts Koza, trusts the pack, trusts Shumaru.

They will be alright.

But still, she watches until they have rounded the bend, listens for the fade of their footsteps, their breaths, Kime's sniffling, waits until all she hears is the wind whistling through the bare branches of spring, Takamaru's breathing, and the steady _hum _that she'd always associated with Okami-sama.

She walks through the empty streets then, passes through places she recalls people being, suddenly more than just her own house filling with ghosts.

There — the pottery workshop where Kijihara had thrown clay, there — the porch stoop where Asari would sit smoking, there — the open patch of land where Taiki's daughters would play, there — the yard where Haruko-baa would be when she'd grill food over an open fire, there — the bend of the river where she'd kissed Kiyo for the first time, there — the lover's lane, there — her elder brother teaching her to throw knives, there — the graves of her family, there — Okami's shrine emptied of its statues, there— the outline of a man in white with the sunlight bleaching his hair walking up the dusty path to sit with her under the sweet scent of wisteria.

All these ghosts, they howl so loud.

She looks about this place, one more time.

A home.

A pack.

A promise of prosperity.

Yasuka-sama had built this place for her children, and her children's children, throughout the long years, a line unbroken until it got to her.

_You will be a great queen, forged from ash and fire. _

"Are you ready, boy?" she asks Takamaru.

She feels more than hears his word of affirmation.

_This is not destruction_, she thinks. _This is a beginning. _

She makes one hand sign and sets the entire villa ablaze.

The fire burns white, then blue, then at last red, and the woman who walks out of the ashes is different than the one who started walking.

* * *

"Falling in love with a god

is not a death sentence.

The story is only a tragedy

if the god loves you back."

— Unknown

* * *

**A.N.** Gratuitous Rebirth Imagery? Yes. But in other news, yes, Hokime is adorable and cute from all perspectives and Mari is certified A Queen.

I've got several chapters of the Regularly Scheduled Fanfiction queued up and mostly done, (barring a few scenes that still keep bugging me) so there should be some signs of life for like, Bloodless, Sunfall, Moonrise, and Ashen in perhaps the next few weeks. I am tentatively hopeful! I go through the beta process now, instead of just throwing chapters out there with many many spelling and grammar mistakes, so the polishing of the words might take a bit, but it's getting there.

It's getting there, and I am deeply grateful to everyone who make these chapters possible, to my betas and readers, thank you so very much.

~Tavina


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by UmbreonGurl, Petrames, animemoms, aflowerydeath, and Fishebake.**

* * *

"is the

blood on your hands

dry? Is it slowly

disappearing? Mine isn't."

—Ashley Mares, "_Psalm of Scattered Ashes"_

* * *

He should not have expected the integration of the Inuzuka to be easy. In hindsight, he probably should have told Anija that such a thing would be a lost cause, that they were too different to properly _fit in, _and could probably be left to their own devices atop a mountain that was rumored to be an ancient site of disaster with allies who mostly took to guarding merchant caravans across the length and breadth of Fire Country and who rarely ventured abroad. They weren't valuable enough to justify the expenditure, he should've argued.

He should've done a lot.

He probably should've told Anija that, but the one time he'd thought to maybe do so, he'd gotten to the bottom of the tower before he realized that Anija was _not _alone in the office.

What he and Uchiha Madara were doing three stories above him was _not his business. _

He'd stood there, a muscle clenching painfully in his jaw, for approximately half a minute before choosing to just go back to his lab. It would spare him the questions that swirled around in his mind for at least the next few hours to focus on a complex sealing array instead of —

It _cheapens _the idea that his brother had sold him long ago when they were children is all.

_A place where children don't have to die! A place where we can all stop fighting!_

But now that the village is _here_, well, the narrative had changed as it was wont to do. And now somehow he is left to pick up the shattered pieces.

The narrative had changed and possibly left him more jaded than it had in the beginning, which brings him now to the present day instead of events now nearly a year prior — Inuzuka Komari grinning at Hyuga Heijiro from across the council table.

"Really," she drawls, black eyes amused, a crooked smile with a hint of fang affixed to her face though her chakra bubbles angrily under the surface. "We've got a word for your type of man where I come from. _Yowamushi._" _Coward. _

This causes the Hyuga to bristle, Byakugan flaring before suddenly sitting back down, Byakugan hidden once more. She hadn't done anything at all besides sit there, slowly drumming her fingers on the table, but he had felt the difference, had felt her chakra escape her near certainly on purpose for just the barest of moments, brighter and sharper than flame.

"Nevertheless, it's _your _clan member who attacked my nephew and I will not stand for such insults from a pack of curs."

"Yuzu punched your nephew because he was looking down her shirt." There's a soft edge to her words, deceptive like a river current before a flood. "Was she supposed to do nothing?"

"He did nothing of the sort."

She shrugs, idly. "Well you're too much of a coward to step outside and settle this with me the _proper _way." Casually, she props her head up at the table with her left hand and stares dramatically at the nails on her right. "I fail to see how we can properly resolve the issue, _Heijiro-kun._"

She's _maddening, _unlike any other woman he's ever met before, she seems to have that wild bold swagger so often taken up by men.

He wishes he could say that he disapproves of it. It would make things so much simpler among them, but he doesn't. He finds the thought of staring down a person's shirt distasteful. He is rather glad that the person involved found the anger to punch Hyuga Heijiro's nephew for doing it. He is startlingly and shockingly more appreciative of the bold way Inuzuka Komari chooses to manage her family affairs than he'd ever thought he would be.

He says nothing.

Instead, all that happens is that a vein pops on Hyuga Heijiro's temple, and Inuzuka Komari stares at her fingernails with great interest.

The other clan heads say nothing.

In the silence, Uchiha Madara barks a laugh. "What, Hyuga, don't have the balls to go outside?" The words ring out sharply, driving the wedges sharper, deeper, into this frail new peace.

Hyuga Heijiro stands abruptly, and leaves the room. Then, what's happening makes him want to leave the room too, so it's not as if the Hyuga is acting unreasonably.

In the emptiness, Uchiha Madara starts laughing, the sound seemingly echoing over the walls. "You were right, woman. He's a coward through and through."

His brother's… _Lover_ his mind supplies rather casually — is callous and seething, his chakra a raging bonfire always smouldering just under the surface. It'd been so since even before Izuna had died.

He'd played his own part in that, it was only the truth.

But it had been battle. It'd been business.

Inuzuka Komari glances in the general direction of the laughing man, who has now been laughing for so long that Tobirama almost wishes he would stop, but says nothing.

It's been a long time since he's heard Uchiha Madara laugh, and this is nothing like even the crazed laughter of the battlefield. It's the laughter of a man who's delighting in the blaze of something only he can see. Coupled with the seething mass of rage and grief that presses from that side of the room, it sets Tobirama on edge.

There's no shame in killing for business, especially when one tip of his own hand, one act of mercy would've caused his own life to end.

His hands are bloody, but he's never regretted any death he's dealt.

"I believe," he says in Anija's absence. Anija being off on other, pressing business. "that the Hatake were slated to arrive next month?"

"Mmm, Kota-kun had said so, yes," Komari sighs. "I wouldn't hold him to it though, the Hatake travel at the pace of their clients."

It is the familiar way she talks about the Hatake Vanguard, Hatake Kotaro, who'd responded to Anija's hand extended in peace with a grudging 'if the Inuzuka agree to peace, my family will follow,' that gives him pause.

But then he remembers that Inuzuka Hokime-chan has a Hatake father who she has not seen for some time now, and slowly the understanding that they were likely tied by marriage and blood reasserts itself.

Perfectly normal. Perfectly normal even though the Hatake did not seem to organize into a central clan structure at all and much preferred to go their separate ways for all except two weeks of the year.

It's entirely possible she knows exactly who replied when he wrote.

* * *

The Hatake arrive quietly. He doesn't see it happen except in trickles, in the appearance of one or two people, here and there.

There is no grander greeting for them, no clan heads turned out in welcome, for they do not come as one group but as fifty to seventy-five disparate family groups.

The only reminder he slates on his calendar is that he should probably ask them to give more detailed census records so that they may be properly accounted for.

Number of active shinobi.

Number of elderly in need of care.

Number of children.

How many people in trade.

How many civilian connections.

The strength of the village grows, but only if all come together like one clan, or at least set aside the natural instinct to look after one's own more than any other.

Heaven knows that he has not managed it. Heaven knows he hasn't the skill to make others feel at ease, to comfort and to cajole, to smooth things over. That had always been Anija's world, to walk through life with the comfort of knowing that others would find him genuine and to take him at his word.

He substitutes with careful planning, with rehearsing his words before he says them, with preparation, again and again and again, and yet life still threatens to upend whatever he has planned.

Like right now for example, having been "ambushed" of a sort, by a tiny wolf child who had waited for him to step out of his tower office for lunch.

He ignores the idea that he could've taken the back stairs as Anija and the Uchiha had done and avoided her.

Inuzuka Hokime-chan tugs him through the new marketplace, chattering bubbly about this and that, pointing at things she has not seen before, asking him for names and explanations.

It is all he can do to _not _lose her in the crowd.

She has a tendency to dash off. It is the _only _reason he keeps her small hand firmly clasped in his own.

_The only one,_ he tells himself. _There is no other reason. _

"Oh and what's that one, Tobira-jiji? The red ones on that stick over there!" She points excitedly, laughing. "They smell sweet!"

"Candied hawthorne."

"What's that?"

He glances down at her small, beaming face, and almost smiles. "You've never tried it before?" It's called mountain hawthorne for a reason and he'd spied the fruits on his trip up Mount Hoyoken briefly.

She is a clan head's daughter who wore a patched jacket, an old ruff of fur, and worn cloth shoes.

For a moment, for whatever reason, he feels something, something brief and transitory, a hollow thing in his chest moving. He had not ever considered himself wealthy, not in terms of familial connections or peace of mind — he does not recall the last day he had spent free of worry and responsibility — but monetarily at least, he has spent a far more idyllic childhood.

She swings their clasped hands back and forth. "Nope!"

He reaches into his pouch, tosses a few coins onto the vendor's table. "One stick please."

She might've been a child of peace, but she has not had tanghulu.

It'd been Itama's favorite food.

Chichi-ue had spoiled him with it on the way back from missions, carefully selecting the biggest one for his baby brother. It had hurt to look at after Itama was gone, a reminder of childhood and innocence and days when things were not necessarily _happier _but lighter in some way he has not felt in some time.

His feelings had calcified when Chichi had also gone, returned to the clay.

_From dust we come and to dust we return. _

He crouches down, offers the stick to Hokime-chan, and holds it until he is sure that she has her small hand firmly around the bottom end. "Would you like to try?"

Her eyes go wide. "For me?" She glances up at his face, and then quickly looks away again.

It's such a little thing, and yet he can feel her elation spreading across her chakra signature like a drop of ink into still water, effusive, radiant, _genuine _enough that it makes his heart catch in his throat.

When was the last time—

"Ah," he hums. "For you." If he'd originally planned to somehow leave her behind and escape unscathed, there's no escape now. There is nothing about him unscathed anymore.

"Thank you so much Tobira-jiji!" She holds the skewer up to him. "You first!"

Is this another one of those traditions that makes sense to other people, but not to him? Is this something other clans offer each other?

Or is it just the generosity of Inuzuka Hokime's spirit?

It's on the tip of his tongue to say something, anything, say _I don't particularly like tanghulu_, to put his pain in the past, to conjure it up again like a hungry ghost, but he does not.

He does not.

Instead he opens his mouth, and carefully pulls the first tanghulu off of the skewer with his teeth, an explosion of sweetness bursts on his tongue, followed sharply by the tang of the sour nature of the mountain hawthorne.

It is memory. It is gritty. It is both clay and life.

She laughs, the sound light and airy, childish glee. "You made a funny face Tobira-jiji." A small finger prods at the sticky patch of caramelized sugar on his cheek. "Was it good?"

"Ah." He is no cold hearted man. He knows this. Knows it very well. All men seem to wear a cold face next to Anija, and his is a face less expressive than most.

He's rather aware that most choose to read his lack of expression as disinterest, as heartless character. And he learned early that arguing matters only made them worse, so he has let it lie.

"It's sour." There's a little bit of surprise in her voice. "Tobira-jiji, why didn't you say so?"

She's tugging at the edge of his sleeve, a slight hint of betrayal in her tone, big honey colored eyes staring up at him serious enough as though it were really the end of the world she was talking about instead of her current fixation having a sour center despite being wrapped in sweetness.

A noise escapes him.

It takes him a moment to recognize that he is laughing — he has not laughed in some time — but at the same time he is hard pressed to explain why that is.

"I thought you would know." He reins in his amusement, reminds himself that it is not kind to laugh at the misfortune of others. "But I am sorry I did not warn you ahead of time."

She pulls another one off of the skewer, chews it slowly. "I like it though, Tobira-jiji." A small hand pats the edge of his armor. "Don't be sad."

"Mmm." He wasn't sad exactly, more dwelling on things he should not be thinking of than sad, but memory is a fickle thing, persistent in all the wrong times.

"Haha didn't let me hug you when you visited." Hokime bounces down the path, hand still firmly tucked in his. "She said if I tried she was going to make Takamaru sit on me." A thunderous frown crosses her face. "One day I will grow really really really big! And then I will make my partner sit on _her, _and she'll have to listen to me!"

When he visited.

This jumble of sentences makes very little sense when he attempts to parse the meaning from the words.

"Why would you want to hug me?"

"Because you're sad!" There's something stormy in her eyes, an obstinate frown upon her face. "How're you going to be happy if you don't get hugs?"

Setting aside the implications that hugs make people happy and that he certainly had never felt so — which is probably why Anija had stopped trying some years ago — "How am I sad?" He has certainly never considered himself as such. There was no great tragedy in his life, no point upon which all the faultlines break that someone could point to and say 'this is what has made Senju Tobirama sad' but she seems convinced enough that he probably _ought _to disabuse the notion.

"Could hear you walking." She's still frowning, but now she's looked away, her grip on his hand ever tightening. "You didn't sleep at _all, _Tobira-jiji. People only do that, only do that when they're sad."

He half suspects _people _is just another word for some very specific person that she cares about enough to have picked up all of their whims and moods.

"You could hear me walking." Her chakra signature had been across the house, much further down the hall than were he had stayed as a guest in a room that had once belonged to someone else.

"Uh-huh."

"What else can you hear?" If she could hear him walking across the house did she also hear—

Did Anija embarrass himself further, did everyone else _know _the next morning, did—

She blinks at him. "What normal people hear. Why?"

He breathes out.

_She's a child. _A rather precocious and perceptive child. Still a child.

"Hearing other people walking when they are across the house is not what normal people hear, Hokime-chan." _He _knew about the movement of people through his space because of their chakra signature, could read whether they were happy or sad by the feel of their chakra, a sixth sense that was tactile in every sense of the word.

"But everyone does!" She counts the people on her fingers. "Haha does, and Koza-ji does, and so does Kota-ji and Taiki-san and Haruko-baasan and Asari-neesan and Miho-chan and Jin-kun and, and—" She begins to run out of fingers. "And everyone _does._"

Inuzuka Kozashi had heard a two word whisper some seven yards up ahead.

He'd thought at the time that while it might not have been special to the man who had greeted them, which reminds him that he really ought to at least try to understand the Inuzuka clan structure, that it had been something that was active.

That Inuzuka Kozashi had been perhaps, more alert than normal or trying to listen in.

That it was _passive. _That threw him further.

"I don't."

He could sense the intensity of chakra, could sometimes sense particularly strongly held emotions, could pinpoint a rough location, provided the target was in range, get a sense of the direction of movement and its relative speed, but he cannot hear it.

Very carefully, she pulls him down and seemingly spends a long time staring at his ears. "They don't look any different, Tobira-jiji."

"It might be a clan trait, Hokime-chan." He half sighs. "Most people do not hear like your family does."

She tries bending his ear so she can also stare at the back of it. Rather absently, he takes her hand and pulls it away. Nothing of him has been left unscathed today, but he rather wishes that his ears weren't so thoroughly stared at either. "But if _my _chichi is a Hatake and _your _chichi is also a Hatake then—"

"My chichi-ue was a Senju."

Senju Butsuma would be rolling in his grave upon hearing this, Tobirama rather supposes, if not for the small fact that his father did not, in fact, have a grave.

Men who died in rivers and then were probably hacked apart into pieces out of hatred did not tend to have graves.

"But how would that _work?_" She pats his face worriedly. "If you are a Senju, and your haha was a Senju and your chichi was also a Senju, where did you—" she breaks off midway through her sentence, shakes herself carefully as if reminding herself that saying whatever she wanted to continue to say was _rude _and then continues upon a different tact. "You don't look very much like your ani, Tobira-jiji."

"We don't share the same mother." It goes unmentioned these days, enough that he suspects most have forgotten about it. Toka certainly calls him cousin easily enough, even though by blood she is _Anija's _cousin.

"But—"

Truly nothing of him will escape unscathed today. Not his person, not his purse, not his feelings, not his _pride, _not his existence, truly not anything.

"The Senju inherit patrilineally."

He sees her open her mouth to ask, and he almost curses himself for forgetting that the Inuzuka probably have never heard of that word.

"It means I inherit the name of my father." _And the temper of my father, and the callous heart of my father, and the lack of expression, and — _

Very carefully, two small arms loop around his neck, and she presses her cheek to his. "Don't be sad, Tobira-jiji. You're too nice to be sad."

He could almost laugh at this, but it would be a sound too cutting for children's ears.

He swallows it instead.

* * *

A week or so after that tiring day when he did not end up eating lunch, two white haired men make their way into the gathering of clans, one older and seemingly frailer, walking with a slight limp, and the other much younger, with broad shoulders that only youth could provide.

Something in the back of his mind slowly begins to creep towards the forefront. Beside him, Anija vibrates in his seat, willing to let Komari take the first greeting if only because the Inuzuka arrival in Konoha had been what brought the Hatake into the fold, but he knows it will not be a long wait before Anija bursts back into the conversation.

Anija always does.

Komari rises, bows to the older man, and in all the time he'd known her he had not seen her so much as bend. "Gifu-san." _Father-in-law._

Then was the young man her—

The younger man catches her by the elbow. "Aneja! Too formal by far." No.

Some other man then.

"Kota-kun," she drawls, voice a soft shade of fond. "Did you forget to respect your elders?"

So Hatake Kotaro was her brother-in-law.

The nagging feeling that he had forgotten something slowly started to worsen. These people were...familiar.

And yet he is certain he had not met them before.

The older man covers his smile with a hand, but could not cover the gentle amusement threading through his chakra the same way. "Leave the young to their irreverence, Mari-chan. I seem to recall a girl who was much the same."

Somehow, the gentle barb sets her eyes alight. "Really, Gifu-san, I do not appear to have ever met this girl you speak of." She turns to the wider audience. "My father-in-law, Hatake Eishun-san, and his second son, Hatake Kotaro."

For a brief moment, he meets Kotaro's eyes from across the room.

They are the color of honey, awashed with light so that they look like the sun.

He feels the hot flash of fury in the other man's chakra, sees the sudden tension in narrowed eyes, livid seething rage, before it is gone as quickly as it had come. This was more than hatred because he was Senju.

It had such a personal air to it, such a promise that Hatake Kotaro wanted nothing more than to leap across the room and kill him.

The something in the back of his mind slams into the forefront.

There'd been the morning sunlight. Dew on the ground.

He'd taken a job out to western Fire Country. A shock of white hair. Eyes the color of honey.

Blood on the ground between them.

_It had been business, _he thinks and wishes that his hands were clean.

* * *

"War is a slippery slope.

What would you do?

Becomes

What will you do?

Becomes

My god, what have you _done?_"

— _You Meant So Well_ (19.2.17)

* * *

**A.N. **In which, Tobirama gains a child, thinks about uncomfortable things, and has an unfortunate realization about the nature of death and killing. I wish I could say that no one saw this coming, but c'mon we all read chapter 2 so, _everyone _saw this coming eventually.

In other news, I've started my fourth semester at college, and I _assume _I will update in the near future. Unclear what exactly I'll be updating since I have a few different chapters of various fics close to completion, but I am still writing (as I always am) so it will be something.

Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed, favorited and followed. Truly, y'all make my day.

~Tavina


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. Beta'd by Petrames, drowsyivy, UmbreonGurl, and Fishebake.**

* * *

"In the end, everyone is aware of this;

Nobody keeps any of what he has,

And life is only a borrowing of bones."

— Pablo Neruda, _Dying Into Now_

* * *

Kota sits at her kitchen table, strange and rough in its newness, his hands wrapped around a cup of steaming tea. He'd arrived in time for spring planting, though she suspects he'll make a mess of it, like Kiyo did once upon a time.

The Hatake were not known for being settled, and planting, that connection with the land is foreign to them even under the best of circumstances, which this is _not. _

Once, many years ago, when Kiyo had first walked out of the red dust to come a-courting, he'd sat down on her porch under the trailing wisteria vine, and laughingly told her he would help her with the planting, before he'd come to the rueful realization that his wandering feet could never truly stay settled.

And now he's wandered further than the stars, to lands she will not walk to join him until the sun sets on her life years from now.

She lives. She breathes, and one day perhaps, she would join him where the sun has set and only twilight sits — listening.

Kota fidgets while sitting there, a bouncing knee, unsettled fingers, that clench and unclench around the teacup.

"Your tea will grow cold, Kota-kun." Kime was out exploring with Takamaru, and while she did not trust this strange new peace, the landscape of this terribly foreign era where like did not live alone with like — clans that were once enemies now had to deal with the tenants of being neighbors — she trusted Takamaru to keep her daughter safe from harm.

"The murderer was there, in the room." Kota's voice breaks and his breathing turns rough with something she can only call wounded grief. "And I couldn't do anything. I'd _signed._"

Yes, he had signed. She'd encouraged him to.

She loved Kiyo's brother too much to let him die for the sake of vengeance. Kota is young, and hot-headed and if the way he's acting right now is any indication, he would've leapt across the table and tried to kill Senju Tobirama in a heartbeat if he had not signed.

And that could only end in death, for Senju Tobirama is no easy man to kill and Kiyo had always been better with a sword than his little brother.

"Yes," she agrees. Kiyo, more than anything else, would've wanted his younger brother alive. "You did." _He would want his wife alive too, _a small voice argues, but she shoves that back to the hidden depths of her mind. Whatever her moon wanted for her, it is a very different story now.

"You _knew_." Kota says again, without drinking his tea, his hands clasped looser around the cup now. "Aneja, you _knew._" _And you didn't stop me. _

She hears the accusation in the words he didn't say, the tone that's half of boyish shock and half of grief.

She hears the accusation and knows that it rings true, down in her marrow.

"I did know," she admits, and feels a touch of rue when grief and anger cloud Kota's eyes for a moment, but that is quickly and ruthlessly buried. He'd smelled so _betrayed. _She'd heard it in the hitch of his breathing, the way he almost but not quite could believe it.

But he could believe it, given what he knew of her.

Better to be a living coward than a courageous dead man.

The dead hold prominence, have, and always will, but the living change history, guided by the eyes of gods and the whims of fate.

"Aneja—" Kota cuts himself off, mouth working but words no longer coming out.

She sits down at the table with him, on the other side, a smile on her lips though that's also no comfort perhaps because he can likely read the disappointment in her scent as easily as picking up a kunai. "Drink your tea, Kota-kun, it's getting cold, and we can talk."

When he leaves later that afternoon, his steps are calmer and more sure of himself than when he came in.

And she counts that as a kindness, even if it wasn't a kindness she gave.

* * *

By some sort of rather perverse quirk of fate, Kime takes a liking to Senju Tobirama. Sitting in the kitchen with her feet swinging back and forth, over the floorboards, still shining in their newness, and chattering about this and that, Kime tells her about how 'Tobira-jiji' really was just _sad. _

_He's so sad, Haha. Why is he so sad? How do I make him happier? Tobira-jiji shouldn't be sad!_

And she supposes, that this was never out of the realm of possibility.

Kime is a child still, and she'd always been friendly.

And something about Senju Tobirama had reminded her only child of Kiyo.

She doesn't have the heart to explain the matter, not when Kime looks so happy now, in ways that she hasn't been for a long time.

"Haha," Kime tugs at her sleeve urgently. "Haha, you haven't answered, Tobira-jiji isn't happy. How do I help?"

She glances over at her daughter, who is standing knee deep in the paddy water, limply holding a few more stalks of young rice to be planted, and the crooked rows Kime has turned out so far. "There are many reasons why Senju Tobirama may not be happy." She thinks about it, and can plainly see plenty of reasons why it might be so — the animosity between his brother's husband and himself, the sheer workload the man has, the odd way that no one will look him in the eye — none of which Kime could possibly hope to fix. "But not all things are fixed so easily, neh?"

Kime shoves another rice plant into the dirt beneath their feet. "But Haha, can't you think of something?"

"Hmmmm?" She plants another rice stalk, bending low as is the nature of planting season, warm mud between her toes as water sloshes about her calves. They could not cart the paddy fish with them, but she hopes to introduce new ones from the river soon, hopes that the paddies will attract frogs. "My little wolf, why would I be thinking of something?"

"Because people are always happier after talking to you, Haha."

She has not thought so in recent months, with the way that people came to her house for disputes over this and that, uneasy with their new neighbors, upset over things that have already changed, unsure of Okami-sama and his faith in the clan.

She has _mediated _disputes yes, but that does not mean that the end result is happiness. "Things are more complex sometimes," she says, slowly tasting the words that come alive to her senses, the world coming alive in the throes of spring. "And just because I know what might make members of our pack happy, does not mean I know what will make Senju Tobirama happy, Little Wolf." _He is not pack, and I have no understanding of him that I care to use to make him happy. _

And that is true, sure enough.

For Asari and Kiji and Yuzu and Kota and the others, she knows what will bring them peace, what will set them at ease, that she need only pass time smoking with Asari to hear all the words in her heart.

But for strangers, she is much at a loss.

And for this particular stranger, she has much less to say at all.

"But Haha," Kime grumbles, sloshing after her as they plant more rice. "Can't you try?"

The question follows her well into the evening, with dragonflies darting here and there among the newly planted rice, as the sun slides down to rest. _Can't you try? _

* * *

Uchiha Madara comes to call rather suddenly one day, while she's sitting at a desk, writing with quick strokes of a pig bristle brush, logging the fields planted, the houses built, where Kiji might be getting clay for his pottery from the Nakano River, a thousand little details that happen when one moves and suddenly everything changes.

The wisteria sapling planted at the corner of her porch is a frail little thing, unlike the vines of her memory, blanketing the entire porch with sweet, dangling flowers all throughout the summer.

Their herds of sheep had traveled with them from the Villa, but now needed a new place to be tended, her relatives who worked the wool into clothing needed direction on what to do next, as did everyone else. Leatherwork, wool, the spring planting, the pigs, the dogs, bamboo groves and woven baskets, where to place Okami-sama's shrine, all the traditions of her clan have been shifted and made new, and this is the time to set down new traditions, new ways to go about business.

She hears him coming from a long ways off, smells the woodsmoke, sweat, and rust that clings to him as if he's come from a forge.

"Didn't take you for the type," he drawls, voice deep with a slight rasp that almost turns into a cough. Casually, he leans one broad shoulder against the doorframe, and doesn't come further into the room.

"I'm a queen, not a washerwoman." She knows her kanji, the set for daily use, the set for formal use, the set only for clan records, the set for Okami-sama, had been taught them by her mother, back when she was only a girl. She raises her eyes to meet his gaze then, red and black pinwheels spinning in the wind. "Is there a reason you've come to visit, Uchiha-san?"

This close, she hears the wetness in his lungs. It's something that she's listened to for a long time now, though he disguises his coughing often as laughter.

Demented, crazy laughter, but laughter nonetheless, which implies he doesn't _actually_ want to hear someone comment upon it.

Which, is unfortunately quite worrying of him, considering that he felt the need to be perceived as crazy before being perceived as sick and probably in need of medical attention. Why no one has done anything about it is a different matter, and certainly not her affair.

"You've got a child." Uchiha Madara crosses his arms over his chest and doesn't say much more.

"I have a daughter, yes." She has a daughter, a pack, a future to look out for.

"A Hatake child." Ah, he did not miss the hair then, how funny it is when other clans speak of rule by men.

"An _Inuzuka _child." She shrugs languidly. "She is my daughter."

He seems to consider this for a long moment before he speaks again. "Any reason why she keeps coming to the Tower?"

"She's decided that Senju Tobirama needs hugs." She raises an eyebrow at the man leaning against the doorframe. "Don't worry, if you're sad enough you'll be infested with hugs too."

The man barks a laugh at this, sharp, cutting, more than a little defensive. "Like hugs ever did anything for men like us."

"There something wrong with men like you?" She has her own sword to sharpen against Senju Tobirama, but she has heard of plenty, much that other people aren't aware that she and her clan have been hearing.

"Better question," he says, in a slow, heavy drawl. "What isn't wrong with men like me?"

She laughs herself at this, a smile curved sharp about her teeth. "You gonna need a list? Or would you prefer to accept it as the truth?"

"I'd like the list." He's crossed his arms, leaning against her door jamb.

"Vainer than a tiger admiring his own stripes." She waves a hand at him to come in. "If you want a list you'll also want a seat."

That seems to throw him off balance for a moment before he slowly pushes himself away from the door jamb to sprawl relatively peacefully onto her tatami mat. "Well," he says after a moment, "I believe I was promised a list."

She makes a note of the newly planted rice, brushstrokes quick and sure as she marks out the number of paddies and their relative locations — she will have to ask Kazuki to come map out the land for her to give her a sense of scope and scale — before she thinks to respond.

"I assume," she says lightly. "That you have both a functioning mind and a functioning heart, neither prone to delusional insensicalities or weeping sementality, have all of your limbs attached where they are supposed to be, your morals more or less in the right place, once learned a peculiar set of manners you still carry, have some sort of commitment to peace and general welfare, of your pack if nothing else, and that you're not so far gone round the bend of the river that you can't seen your own reflection for the flattery of your stripes."

He laughs at this, genuinely laughs this time, roaring with mirth as he lies sprawled on the tatami mat in the center of the room. "Are those the only measures of a man?" he asks, after another moment.

"Are there other measures that matter when it comes to the inherent value of a soul?" Before Okami-sama, all souls have value. She wonders what gods he worships for that to have twisted into something else.

"I am certainly a blight on the landscape when it comes to peace," he observes without any particular fanfare. "Which implies something wrong with my internal makeup."

"I doubt it." She makes another note to ask Kohaku-chan about the state of the furs from the previous winter. "Unless your stomach is attached to your liver, there's nothing wrong with your internal makeup, only your attitude."

She rises. There are three sets of feet coming up the walk to the porch, and growing closer by the moment is Kime, arguing with her Tobira-jiji.

Something about the nature of rice, which Kime is arguing that she knows a lot about after helping with the planting.

Kime bounces into the room first, followed by Takamaru quickly on her heels, "Haha, Haha, who's the Jiji visiting?"

She casts a glance back at the man who has picked himself off of the tatami in record time, a hand on the hilt of his wakizashi. "Uchiha Madara-san, Little Wolf."

Senju Tobirama lingers outside for a moment longer, before turning and vanishing down the path.

Kime peers around her to look at Madara with serious eyes. "Jiji with messy hair?"

Something on the man's face freezes, and seemingly gets shoved to the very very back of the consciousness before he mumbles a shamefaced "of course," and makes his excuses to head out the door.

What had just happened between Senju Tobirama and Uchiha Madara was _interesting. _

She has _heard _of course, that neither man preferred each other's company, and they were kept from bloody violence only by Senju Hashirama's regard for both his husband and his brother, but she is almost certain that Tobirama had come up to the door, but didn't intend to come in.

Interesting.

* * *

It takes some time for her to end up being the one on the prowl with Takamaru at night outside the village proper — Kime needed someone to sleep in the house with her, and Haruko-baa simply hadn't had the time to come up to the house in between all the cooking she has done to feed everyone — but it is now again, her turn to guard the rice and the livestock which are housed away from the sprawling central market of the village.

No one had been happy with the idea of buying and selling — _it is the ones who live below who care for money — _nevermind that they now lived in the village walls and likely wanted the things that could be bought.

But there is no buying and selling between family — members of the pack traded labor and skills with each other — so she sees how the moment is disquieting.

"They are squabbling," Takamaru observes, having guessed the direction of her thoughts. "Because we might have to make some new traditions."

"We were comfortable at home." It is true enough. Life in the villa means that they do not have to interact with outside ideas. They could look down below and judge, without being in the thick of it.

And now the pack is out here, in the same dirt as the other clans that have always been judged for being warlike, greedy, without morals or sense. It's hard to judge someone else for being greedy when you _also _want more than just the hand craft you practice and the land.

She's seen the girls stare at the brightly colored hair ribbons and cotton kimono, seen the boys turn green with envy when the Uchiha weapons seller lays out his wares, the way older women looked at the fine Senju woodwork furniture, the way Akimichi food sets off her daughter's nose.

It is harder to be satisfied with what you own when there's something else right before you that's _also _tempting.

"I don't see why it's such a bad thing to change." Takamaru huffs and flattens his ears against his head. "Too comfortable isn't good either."

"No, of course not." She suspects that most of the pack has grown too comfortable in their traditions and what little interaction they had with the outside world has only served to remind them of the complicated messy nature of living in close proximity to those of different philosophies, and they had not appreciated it. "But we have grown too comfortable, and now we must unlearn our love of comfort and trade it for survival."

The pack's traditions might warp a little, left out as they are because of the newness of the place they must now call home, but they will not be erased entirely.

No, she has faith that some things never will be erased, that there's too much grit in the soul of the pack for it to fall short at this new hurdle.

Takamaru makes a disgruntled noise, but their conversation switches to other topics. "Your pup likes visiting the water man." He turns dark eyes up to her. "Calls him Jiji."

"She likes him." She shrugs. "It's not for me to figure why." She has a good idea of why, and the thought is ironic enough to send her into hysterical laughter.

"_You _don't like him." Takamaru's lips pull back, a growl low in his throat as his canines glint in the moonlight. "Murderer."

_He's a murderer. _

"No, I don't." The moon is a round thing over the paddy fields, a broken thing on the water. "But there's more ways to kill than teeth at his throat."

For lack of a better word, Senju Tobirama is _interested _in her, if the way he acts when she steps into the room is any indication.

She knows if she encourages it, his half confusion half fascination could change to something else rather rapidly. She could hold his heart in the palm of her hand — has anyone given this man any attention or love before that he tries to lick it off the edge of a knife now — and then she could tear it to pieces and that would be just as good as killing him, possibly worse.

But that would be a game, and her haha had held her hands once long ago and said that queens do not play games. Queens that have honor do not play games.

But she isn't sure these days if she _does _have honor.

The snap of twigs draws her attention away. Takamaru's ears have flattened across his skull, a growl vibrating deep in his throat.

Far across the paddies, on the other side of the clearing, there's a broken shaft of moonlight, a dark shape lumbering slowly across it in the direction of the sheep pens, a flash of sharp claws, a glint of intelligence.

She rises from her crouch at the waterline, eyes on the huffing bear on the other side of the rice paddy.

For a moment, everything is still.

By the next, everything explodes into a flurry of motion.

* * *

"The light is dying, as all light must."

— Herodas, _Seven Greeks_

* * *

**A.N. **This chapter took a bit! But I'm happy with it now!

I've been freed from finals and am now working! Sending the best of wishes to everyone, stay safe, and stay sane.

Thank you so much to everyone who's reviewed, favorited, followed, it all means the world to me.

~Tavina


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